Gendered plural pronouns and gendered methods of addressing a group with mixed genders

Hey linguaphiles, I have 2 questions about gendered plural pronouns.

1) Is there a language with gendered plural pronouns that uses the feminine plural pronoun when referring to groups with both male and female members?For example, in French, the pronoun used to refer to a group of girls in third person is "elles" and the pronoun used to refer to a group of boys in third person is "ils". However, if there is even one boy with a group of girls, the pronoun "ils" is used to refer to this type of mixed group.

Is there a language that uses the French equivalent of "elles" instead of "ils" in this kind mixed group? If there are languages that uses the feminine plural instead of the masculine plural for a mixed-gender group in first person and/or second person, please list them as well!

2) Is there a language with gendered plural pronouns that uses a separate pronoun - neither the feminine nor the masculine plural - to refer to mixed-gender groups?

I'm more interested in natural languages that has these features, though if there are any conlangs that do as well, please note that the language is a constructed language in the comment. Thanks!

3) Is there any situation in English (or similar languages with masculine default addresses) where a clearly feminine address is acceptable to refer to a mixed-gender group of people?

For example, in English, "guys" is an acceptable neutral way to refer to a group with guys and girls in it. However, if "girls" is used to refer to a group of girls and boys, then it can taken as sarcasm or as an insult to the boys (emasculating the boys). It is not neutral. Sorry, I'm not sure if I'm explaining myself well here. I guess my question is, is there a scenario where using "ladies" or "girls" or similar terms to address a mixed-gender group does not have connotations of emasculating the male members?

It's the 3rd person singlar feminine pronoun. It's also the 3rd person plural pronoun (regardless of gender) and the 2nd person formal pronoun (regardless of gender or number). It uses verbs in 3rd person singular when meaning "she" and 3rd person plural for the other uses.

Bit of a stretch perhaps, but for no. 3 I was thinking of "nurses" and "male nurses" - I would imagine as a group they would be all addressed as "nurses" ("nurses, can I have your attention?"), which is the term primarily associated with females. I certainly can't see the male members of the group being offended by that.

I thought of nursing as well when I wrote #3 and wanted to say it doesn't count because it is not as clearly gendered as "ballerina" or "actress" is. It is the professional term for both male and female nurses, and should someone request a nurse of a certain gender, they'd ask for a male nurse or a female nurse specifically.

Re the original question, Classical Arabic (and MSA, theoretically) has gendered plural pronouns for all persons except the 1st. The masculine is used for mixed groups. Re (3), an Arab feminist I know once addressed a mixed group using the feminine plural 2nd person pronoun. The point was not to emasculate the males but to draw attention to the exclusionary nature of the gendered pronouns. She wasn't attacking the men but rather acting as if they weren't a part of the conversation. I can't imagine she's the only one to have done this, but I don't think it's common, either (not least because most speakers can't reliably produce all the feminine forms when speaking unprepared).

Sie isn't gendered in third person plural either but it's better than nothing. And I just remembered die in German (definite article for feminine nouns and plurals in nominative and accusative cases). Both came about their current usage because of language simplification/merger of formally distinct plurals if I remembered right?

Re 3, that's very interesting. Though her use of feminine plural wasn't emasculating in nature, it isn't universally inclusive in the same way that using masculine plural is. Thank you for sharing!

This kind of applies. In Portuguese, instead of using the standard "nós" verb form for we, in day-to-day speech, people use "A gente." It's a feminine noun that, literally translated, it means "the people," whether the group included in "we" includes females, males or a mix of both.

Huh, I never knew that about Portuguese. Is this usage is present in European Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese (or both)? Also, I take it there is no "masculine form" of "a gente" like with actor/actress and seamster/seamstress?

Wow, the different ways "a gente" is conjugated based on sentence structure is something I've never seen before. I know there are some plural conjugation exceptions in English, and different articles used depending on if a noun is a loan word or a native word in German. This is the first time I've come across the same word with the same meaning conjugated differently with regards to the verb.

In the case of "a gente vamos," vamos looks like it's first person plural?

Well, I wrote my prior comment under the influence of a sleeping pill, so it may not have been as clear as I'd wanted :)

It's technically incorrect to say "A gente vamos" (which, you're right is the first-person plural). Prescriptively speaking, "a gente" should always be followed by the third-person singular form of the verb. But in lower-prestige dialects, you will often hear it used with the first-person plural. Or, people will extrapolate it to the normal first-person plural pronoun, "nós," but use the third-person singular form the verb. So:

"A gente vamos" or "Nós vai".

HOWEVER, what IS gramatically acceptable in general spoken Brazilian Portuguese is using the first-person plural possesive pronouns ("nosso/s" and "nossa/s") paired with "a gente." Thus:

Yes it does make sense that the verb gets mixed-and-matched between the first person plural and third person singular after your explanation. Thank you! Do you know how this usage of "a gente" came to be?

Gothic does #2. OK, did, since it's a dead language. Joseph Wright says in his grammar that "when a pronoun stands for two substantives of different genders it is put in the neuter plural, as miþþanei þ&omacr; w&emacr;sun jáinar,while they (Joseph and Mary) were there."

In other words: Gothic has three genders - masculine, feminine, and neuter. The nominative plural forms of the pronoun 'that' are þái (m., group of males only); þ&omacr;s (f., group of females only); and þ&omacr; (neuter plural, for neuter things or mixed groups).

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